Cities are central to current sustainable development; although they cover a bare 3% of the world’s surface, they consume 75% of global natural resources and therefore are responsible, directly or indirectly, for the vast majority of the world’s waste and emissions. Cities and municipalities need are of utmost importance when dealing with environmental and social issues, and they have a fundamental role in all sustainable development strategies. However, some cities can find it difficult to finance the actions that need to be taken in this process. The project “Accelerating sustainable finance: sustainable bonds for sustainable cities”, within the Viable Cities program, united CTS, SEI and SSE-Misum in January to study the feasibility, adequacy and ultimately the potential impact metrics in the case of sustainability bonds in Swedish municipalities and regions. This project will be developed in three years, in which in addition to desktop research, actors in the field will be involved through workshops and interviews. So far, we count with the involvement of several municipalities, Regions, Lund University and public and private investors.

Cleantech Scandinavia is one of the three partners of this project. Our main responsibility is to analyse the potential metrics in urban sustainability assessment and, by that, evaluate which ones are more relevant. This work has two clear goals: first of all, determine the adequacy of using certain metrics in the Swedish municipal context and, second, to cross analyse the existence of the current metrics in Swedish municipalities and regions’ sustainability strategies and assess their alignment with sustainability development. We are currently aiming to finalise the desktop research to move forward with the stakeholder involvement. We will keep you posted about the developments of this exciting project!